I had the chance to shoot Paul Telfer, who looks startlingly like you would imagine Superman would look in real life. When I was casting the role of the Sentinel, Paul immediately came to mind. He just looks like someone who would be more than capable of keeping you safe, in this world or DreamWorld!

You might recognize Paul from his recurring role on NCIS, and recent appearances on Body of Proof and Vampire Diaries. In fact, you can catch him on Vampire Diaries on their season finale on hte 16th! Make sure to set your DVR. 🙂 He is also just the nicest person; charming, interesting and he really brought his acting skills into play for the photos. He was a joy to shoot!

DreamWorld was going to need a protector; someone who would watch over you as you sleep and keep the nightmares at bay. As I started thinking about how to visually portray this, I again associated one’s ego with eggs (although I actually conceived and shot this before Lauren’s photo). It seemed very fitting; the intrinsic fragility of eggs, combined with their promise of life, growth and change… a perfect metaphor for the human soul.

For them to work in the photo, they were going to need to be much, much larger than an average egg, so I turned to the internet. It proved really quite difficult to find suitable eggs; everything was either far too small or far too large (and also cost far too much). Eventually though, I came across some plastic eggs at a party supply site. They were all the wrong colors, and the package came with many more than I needed, but they would work, so I purchased them.

Once they arrived, I set about painting them. I started with a few base coats of a pearly blue acrylic paint… I love this paint, it’s actually the same paint that I used to cover the dresser at the foot of my bed. It’s just gorgeous. Being covered in the paint immediately made the eggs look less like toys and much more magical. I added in several more layers of different colors and textures, finishing them by spritzing them with water and then spraying on a light haze of silver spray paint. The paint wouldn’t adhere where the water was, so it gave the eggs a slightly speckled appearance, which made them look like authentic eggs.

Painting eggs

More painting eggs

Paul came over and the weather gods must have been favoring me, since it was a gorgeously overcast afternoon. Cloudy, overcast days are my very favorite, both personally and for shooting in. I scooped up a mess of pine needles, generously provided by the little pine grove in front of my house. Creating a nest out of them brought back fond childhood memories of building just such nests at parks which I’d sit in, pretending to be a bird. Happy memories!

The painted eggs got loaded into the nest, along with some moss I’d found just to give an extra little dimension of realism. Paul posed with them and was such a pro! Shooting all three photos probably took twenty or thirty minutes, and then we were done!

I can never shoot anything without an animal appeared unexpectedly in it, as my neighbor’s dog Mei Mei demonstrates.

Mei Mei bomb

I felt like I’d done a good job with the photos when I had a nightmare a few days after I’d finished them, and imagining the Sentinel guarding me in my sleep helped calm and comfort me. Please enjoy the finished photos and detail shots from each image, and feel free to imagine the Sentinel is guarding your sleep too 🙂